The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7381 p778
24/31 December 2005

Society summary

My branch, your branch: some thoughts for 2006

John Gentle, a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council and secretary of the Shropshire branch, offers his thoughts on why 2006 might be the year in which pharmacists should think about getting involved in their local branches of the Society

Maybe you are too busy for involvement with your local branch. Maybe you have better things to do. Maybe you cannot see why you should bother. Perhaps you went once in 1978 and it was rubbish.

So why should you go to branch meetings? First, the Society invests over £200,000 a year in grants to support the branch network for the benefit of members, so maybe you should drop in and find out what the money is being spent on. That may not be the best reason to join in with branch activities, but it is one reason to take an interest.

You may work for a large company or a hospital and believe that it will train you and deliver your professional needs. But being a member of a profession means that you have responsibilities above and beyond your immediate job description. You have an obligation to play a part in your profession and your branch is a good place to start.

The branches hold regular meetings and the topics can vary enormously. Your local branch is probably the easiest place to go for educational and continuing professional development support and one of the few places where you will be able to meet professional colleagues from all sectors of pharmacy on a one-to-one basis. The ability to meet colleagues from hospital, community, industry and a host of other areas in which pharmacists work is a huge benefit and something that other professions regard with a degree of envy. Our branch network has few parallels in British professional life.

The benefits for you are on several levels. To meet colleagues on a regular basis allows you to exchange ideas and experiences, complaints and information. Meeting people can be an enormous benefit and, of course, the local gossip is usually entertaining. In community pharmacy, you rarely get to meet hospital pharmacists but at your local branch you may well get to meet the people you normally only speak to on the telephone. Putting a face to a voice usually makes life much easier. If you work in hospital, this is your chance to meet the people who deal with the patients when they are discharged.

There are diverse sectors of the pharmacy profession but we can learn so much from talking to each other and the local branch provides that opportunity over a drink, a bite to eat, and a topic that will have some relevance to your daily working life.

The meetings are organised by the branch committee. Normally a small group, they work on a voluntary basis and look to organise meetings to interest local pharmacists, often with close links to other local pharmacy bodies. The committee can develop a programme to fill a local education need or a social event to allow pharmacists to meet, mix and discuss anything from the telephone numbers of locums in the area to the latest Government health policy.

Those of you with an e-mail address are urged to pass these on to your local branch committee and the Society, so that they can contact you and let you know what is happening in your area. This saves your branch secretary a lot of time with stamps and envelopes and makes it easier (and cheaper) to get in touch with you. It also makes it possible to pass on information from the membership team based at the Society’s London head office and is a good way to keep you up to date with what is happening. The membership team is keen to involve members more and more in developing services for pharmacists and the best way to do this is e-mail (those with a computer allergy, just ask your children to help you).

So, the branch can help you, you can get a lot from the branch and if you apply the benefits to your practice then your patients benefit as well. Not bad, eh? If you do not know who is on your committee, then call the membership team, which will put you in touch. And if you fancy joining in and giving your committee a hand, your offer will be most welcome.

To find out more about your local branch contact Amanda King, membership manager, or Emma Rodriguez, membership officer (e-mail b&ra@rpsgb.org) Also look out for the next issue of Network News which will be published with The Pharmaceutical Journal of 14 January 2006. Network News will include a list of branch meetings planned for the first half of 2006.